The present invention relates to bug dispensers and specifically to live cricket dispensers as used for example, by fishermen as live bait.
It is a common knowledge that such live bait as crickets is rather costly and various devices have been offered on the market to reduce the number of dispensed crickets to one at a time, while reducing the possibility of other crickets which are held in one container of escaping through an opening by which access to the holding chamber is achieved. Some of the known devices provide for a one-way access reduced diameter chamber into which a cricket would crawl and from which the fisherman would withdraw a cricket by hooking it while it is still in the reduced diameter chamber. Many of these devices though suffer one major drawback: the cricket must be manipulated by hand or the trap door which encloses the reduced diameter chamber must be manually operated.
Other devices provide for the use of a plug which closes the opening to the reduced diameter section, so that the plug has to be removed and the cricket is pulled out from the restricted diameter chamber.
Still, other known devices allow the cricket to escape from the reduced diameter chamber into the holding chamber, thereby causing a delay in withdrawing a single cricket from the dispenser, thereby making the cricket dispenser difficult to operate and not attractive in the eyes of a fisherman.
Many of the devices have also not used the fact that crickets are incapable of climbing on a smooth surface and, once caught in a chamber which has smooth walls, are incapable of returning back to the larger holding chamber.
Another characteristic of a cricket's behavior which has not been taken into consideration previously is the fact that when the cricket moves forward, it touches objects in front of him with its antennas, and once an obstacle forming a narrow passage is sensed by its antennas, the cricket stops its movement. It has been also observed that the cricket cannot move backwards if his hind legs touch an obstacle behind the cricket.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide for an inexpensive, portable live bait dispenser, for example, crickets, which allows dispensing of the crickets one at a time, without the necessity to manually handle the cricket or to manually operate access or trap doors.